Wednesday, 30 January 2013

Some voices arrive in one’s life without any fanfare or red carpet treatment. They’re not the type to be found at presidential inaugurations, miming or not. They’re rather the kind to offer a seamless, smooth and meditative transition from past to present. On their (sometimes) puny shoulders these voices carry a country’s cultural traditions, occasionally with a modern twist. Cathy Jordan is one of those voices.

Formerly of Irish band Dervish, Jordan’s debut album, All the Way Home, turned up on Killer Opening Song’s doorstep a cold morning last November. It has since barely left its stereo. The first track, The Bold Fenian Men, is even on K.O.S.’s mp3 player for when it goes out jogging.

Haunting and beautiful, The Bold Fenian Men is an old school Irish ballad that abracadabras the way into a record brimming with disarming intimacy. The melody, originally written by Peadar Kearny, is part of the canon of songs with strong Republican sentiments that permeates the Emerald Isle’s folklore. On the clip below Cathy performs the track a capella (click here for the album version), thus, bringing an otherworldly quality to lines like 'Tis fifty long years since I saw the moon beaming/On strong manly forms, on eyes with hope gleaming/I see them again, sure, in all my sad dreaming/Glory O, Glory O, to the bold Fenian men.

Part of what makes All the Way Home a must-have album is Cathy’s sheer quality as a singer coupled with the musicianship of her collaborators. Obviously her voice takes centre stage; however, it is far from being the sole focal point. The arrangements are excellent, especially on tracks such as The Road I Go, In Curraghroe and The Jordan Jig, on which she plays the bodhrán, the Irish frame drum. Although All the Way Home is not as energetic a record as the ones she released with Dervish, the album still packs a mighty punch. Nowhere is this clearer than in the title track, a beautiful and rousing coda to a fine collection of songs.

It’s worth remembering at this point the reason why Killer Opening Songs exists. The genesis of this almost six-year-old section can be traced back to the Gospel according to Rob Gordon. Rob (played masterfully by John Cusack) is the lead in the movie High Fidelity. He is the saint patron of heart-broken, male thirty-somethings who still organise their record collection according to the date when they bought a particular record for a girlfriend or friend (And If I want to find the song "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the fall of 1983 pile, but didn't give it to them for personal reasons). It was Rob’s last words in that movie that gave birth to K.O.S.: “The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention.”

Just like The Bold Fenian Men as sung by Cathy Jordan. A Killer Opening Song.

Sunday, 27 January 2013

Some
years ago I was at a party talking to a fellow Cuban when an acquaintance of
ours (another Cuban) happened to come into the room. We all greeted each other
and I remember answering his question “How is it going?” with: “A la marchita” (Going). I don’t recall
hearing myself using the phrase but the bloke who’d been sitting with me until
that moment looked at me as if he’d just seen an alien.

“A la marchita” is not a form of address
we use regularly in the largest island of the Antilles. And my English
translation doesn’t really do the phrase justice. It fails to convey the old-fashioned
sense of it. The only other person I ever heard using it before was... wait for
it... my father.

“They f**k you up, your mum and dad/they may
not mean to, but they do/they fill you with the faults they had/and add some
extra, just for you”.

Philip
Larkin got it almost right when he wrote This
Be the Verse. Our parents’ approach to child-raising (as good-intentioned
as it is) is probably the reason why many of us rebel in our teens. But then time
marches on and one day we catch our reflection on the bathroom mirror and...
Aaargh! Who’s that looking back at me? Could it be that...? No, yesterday I had my own ears, mouth and
mannerisms. And today they all look like... Even the way I scratch the back of
my left leg with my right foot is just like... mum’s (or dad’s).

Enter middle-age
despondence.

Up until
that moment at the party I’d never realised how much I had metamorphosed into
my father. There had always been comparisons between him and me, but of the
normal kind and they were also easier to accept when I was little. But on
closer inspection I noticed that my habit of bringing up song titles and
linking them to random words in conversations and my current lectures to my
fifteen-year-old-son (delivered with a professor-like, stern tone) were taken
straight out of the Cuban In London Senior’s book.

In the
novel I’m reading at the moment of writing this post, Life is Elsewhere, by the Czech writer Milan Kundera, the main
character, Jaromil, aspires to become a poet but he cannot escape his mother’s
ever-looming shadow. Kundera is a master at describing a person’s inner
conflicts and Jaromil’s love-hate feelings, as a teenager, towards his
progenitor sum up pretty much how we feel about our parents at that difficult
age. Yet, once we arrive at middle age and find that we resemble somewhat those
who are responsible for our existence and the good and bad in us (hopefully
more of the former than the latter) we react with mild horror.

In my
case it’s not just my father’s phrase “A
la marchita” that has made me wonder if it was worth me running away,
metaphorically speaking, all those years ago from my parents’ overprotective
mantle. The first time I chastised one of my children, I remember using exactly
the same words my mother used to utter when she gave me a tongue-lashing. What was
weird about it was that, unlike my father’s old-fashioned greeting which I can’t
recall saying, I plagiarised my mum’s
words on purpose. Has that ever happened to you, my dear fellow bloggers
and readers? Has any of you started to resemble your parents yet? And, is this (un)conscious copying one of
those facts of life that we must resign ourselves to accept, like the
assumption that our offspring will one day get married, have children, a
good job and a house, although not precisely in that order?

Maybe it
is fear what we’re dealing with here. And this fear of behaving like our
parents is deep inside a fear of not being original. After all, part of our
success in life (and I’m not talking of the economic side of it) is based on the
idea of creating. Creating a family, creating a home, creating an experience for ourselves. And
the fact that perhaps behind each act of creation we’re involved in lies the
ubiquitous presence of mum and dad is sometimes too much to bear. Larkin, then, was on to something.

Wednesday, 23 January 2013

The chestnut and chorizo soup from Sam and Sam Clarke's Moro The Cookbook. Photograph: Yuki Sugiura for the Guardian

At the moment of writing this post the weather forecast is announcing
snow for London. Unsurprisingly, I’m thinking of soup and meat, preferable the
latter in the former. So, excuse me my veggies and vegan fellow bloggers, but
tonight we’re going for Spanish sausage. I have made a similar dish before but
bearing in mind that my youngest is allergic to dairy products and sometimes chorizo has either milk or traces of it,
it’s not fair to cook this recipe veru often at home.

In a large saucepan heat the oil over a medium heat. Add the onion,
carrot, celery, chorizo and a pinch of salt and fry for about 20 minutes,
stirring occasionally, until everything caramelises and turns brown.Now
add the garlic, cumin, thyme and chilli and cook for 1 more minute, followed by
the tomatoes and, after about 2 minutes, the chestnuts.Give everything
a good stir, then add the saffron-infused liquid, and the water, and simmer for
about 10 minutes.Remove from the heat and mash until almost smooth but
still with a bit of texture. Season with salt and pepper.

Any recipe with chorizo in it is a badass recipe in my book. That’s why I
need to open the set tonight with a badass song by a badass singer. I first saw
Beth Hart on Jools Holland some months ago and was won over by her passion. Plus she’s an
excellent pianist. Great melody and as spicy as my dish tonight. Enjoy.

From Mexico comes a groovy and funky band making a timely political
statement. I love the powerful lyrics and the video. Mexican
Institute of Sound's Mexico reminds
me of those 2 small dried red chillies. They give a bit of a kick to my musical choices
tonight. Fresh.

Just
like cooking is all about beginnings (the smell of onions, chorizo, carrot and celery is mesmerising) Gomez's How We Operate is all about those first
guitar chords. They stay with you long after the song is finished. Just like
chestnut and chorizo soup. Magnetic.

Poland gave us the great Chopin and now it gives us Warsaw Village Band's. I
love the clip In the Forest and the
zany creativity behind it. It’s just like the saffron threads releasing that
wonderful aroma once they’re in water. It’s the extra ingredient with the oomph
factor. Terrific.

Next Post: "Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music", to be published on Sunday 27th January at 10am (GMT)

Sunday, 20 January 2013

In February 1992 I found myself waiting outside a room in the students’ club that belonged to the then Pablo Lafargue Faculty of Foreign Languages, or ISPLE, as it was known to us. Inside the room were two women, one originally from Boston and the other one from London. The Bostonian was a theatre instructor whilst her sidekick, the Londoner, had plenty of stage experience. I wasn’t alone. There were about a dozen other people with me, too. Some of them were students and one was a teacher. We were all about to audition to become members of the first improvisational theatre workshop in our uni.My short career as an amateur actor was about to be born.Not even in a million years could I ever have imagined that my encounter with the petite, blond “American” (as people used to call one of our instructors, despite the fact that by then there were about three or four more Americans teaching postgraduate courses at the institute) was to change my life forever. The main reason why I auditioned was to improve my English, since the workshops, the rehearsals and the performances would be in that language. I had done a lot of drama and public poetry-reading when little but it’d been a few good years since I’d been in front of an audience. Plus, I was twenty years old at the time so self-consciousness was part of my burgeoning young adult persona.Yet what happened during my audition and my later membership of the impro group had profound repercussions. To the point where a couple of years after and freshly graduated from university, I tried to become a professional actor. Along the way I got involved with another amateur theatre company, did Scene 1 of the First Act of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (I still remember the “Now, for the love of Love and her soft hours/Let's not confound the time with conference harsh/There's not a minute of our lives should stretch/Without some pleasure now/What sport tonight?” It took me ever so long to learn my lines and “live” them! ) and was a member of the Tomas Piard’s experimental video troupe for about a year (think Passolini minus excrement, violence and sex). When I look back on those years, I can’t help thinking that one of the reasons why I blog so confidently now is because of the self-esteem and trust in myself I built up during that time.Amateur dramatics used to be (I don’t know now) quite popular in Cuba. I know at least half a dozen actors and actresses who came from the non-professional world and they were terrific on stage as salaried performers every time I saw them after. In fact, one of my closest childhood friends began his artistic career in an amateur troupe for teenagers and youngsters.

My reminiscence about my years as an amateur actor was prompted by a recent six-week-long series on Sky Arts that was shown at the end of 2012. Sadly, I was only able to catch snippets of each episode without seeing an entire programme. My aversion to so-called “reality shows” was partly to blame for this. However, from what I was able to see, Nation’s Best Am Dram was serious business. The three judges, Miriam Margoyles (who, amongst other roles, has excelled as Dickens’ Miss Havisham), Quentin Letts (insufferable, never liked him) and Bill Kenwright (producer and chairman of Everton Football Club) were fair and objective. The biggest winner was amateur dramatics itself.

Wednesday, 16 January 2013

The absence of sound is eerie. Here it is, the long, (almost) straight queue of football fans leaving the stadium on a semi-dark winter Sunday mid-afternoon. Through my car window (rolled up to avoid the cold wind) I watch them shuffling along quietly. I interpret the smiles on some faces as success on the pitch. Suddenly I am curious. I might not support this specific football team but their current manager used to coach the club I follow until a year ago and opinions on his performance so far have been divided. I open the car window a few inches. A chilly breeze, that feels as soft on my face as a taffeta handkerchief, steals in. I ask a man carrying a boy on his shoulders what the score was. One nil to them. The white cockerel on the left of his jacket is covered by one of the boy’s legs. My attention turns back to the road. The traffic builds up quickly and what should have been a half-hour round trip to the barber’s becomes a three-quarters-of-an-hour return journey home.

The crowd might be muted (by the cold weather, perhaps? Or maybe by the fact that a Belgian defender who played in Holland until last summer scored the winning goal under the careful gaze of a Portuguese manager in the English Premier League? Perhaps fans are still coming to terms with football’s globalisation phenomenon, its pros and cons?), but I am sure their stomachs are rumbling. As befits the modern, standard post-match routine the nearby takeaways and fast food joints beckon. Still holding plastic cups with lukewarm, watered down, tasteless and colourless tea in their hands, many fans pay a visit to Jerky’s (Caribbean grill), Tennessee Express (chicken & ribs) or McDonald’s (…and the little folk/who share a joke/who nudge and poke/about that bloke/who slurps his Coke/and gives his goatee beard a stroke/were just passing by…). There are also those who opt for a pint and stay behind at The Coach and Horses.

Sunday, 13 January 2013

A recent, marvellously written essay by the US-based, British writer Zadie Smith had me reliving memories of how I discovered and became keen on rock in mid to late 80s Havana. Smith’s article, entitled Some Notes on Attunement: A voyage around Joni Mitchell, was published in The New Yorker and was part of my holiday reading. Although I only came across Joni’s music some a few years after I found rock'nroll, I came across via Big Yellow Taxi, Some Notes on Attunement… dealt with themes with which I was able to identify.For instance in Zadie’s household her parents “loved music, as I love music, but you couldn't call any of us whatever the plural of "muso" is. The Smiths owned no rare tracks, no fascinating B-sides (and no records by the Smiths). We wanted songs that made us dance, laugh, or cry”. Likewise in my house, my parents played music (mainly traditional Cuban music) that was mainly uncomplicated and had a beat to it. My father, being a pianist with his own band when I was little, would segue from a piece by Chopin (a composer with his own groove in my humble opinion) to one by the late Cuban virtuoso Ernesto Lecuona seamlessly. So, like Zadie and her family who had Ella and Aretha, we had Benny Moré and the Martí sisters.It was whilst at secondary school that my musical landscape was altered forever. A girlfriend, her sailor father, an old record player and a bunch of albums by the likes of Queen, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were the launchpad from where I dived headfirst into the world of rock’n’roll. With the passing of time I came to the realisation that this was the music my younger thirteen-year-old-almost-fourteen was searching for then. It was different for the college girl Zadie Smith, though. She had Blackstreet and Aaliyah, but couldn’t quite dig Joni the first time around. Nor for many years after for that matter.It was during a trip to Wales that the British author – already in her early thirties and accompanied by her poet husband – “got” Ms Mitchell. But not without first putting up a fight. Joni’s music had been an unwelcome companion throughout much of the journey. In vain she had pleaded with her consort to let her change the “bloody piping” that was getting on her nerves so much. And then it happened. The driver stopped at Tintern Abbey. The change of scenery, the quietness of the place and the closeness to nature all contributed to Zadie’s epiphany:

“We parked; I opened a car door onto the vast silence of a valley. I may not have had ears, but I had eyes. I wandered inside, which is outside, which is inside. I stood at the east window, feet on the green grass, eyes to the green hills, not contained by a non-building that has lost all its carved defences. Reduced to a Gothic skeleton, the abbey is penetrated by beauty from above and below, open to precisely those elements it had once hoped to frame for pious young men, as an object for their patient contemplation”.

About Me

Look well to this day for it is life,
the very best of life. In its brief course lie all the realities and truths of existence, the joy of growth, the splendour of action, the glory of power. For yesterday is but a memory and tomorrow is only a vision. But today if well-lived makes every yesterday a memory of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day.
(Ancient Sanskrit Poem)